Wager-based gaming machines which are configured to accept monetary value wagers from players are well known. In the early days, these machines comprised “slot” machines. The machines were referred to as “slot” machines because they included a coin-accepting slot into which a player inserted one or more coins in order to fund their wager and play the game offered by the machine.
Since then, wager-based gaming machines have been modernized, such as to accept paper currency (e.g. “bills”) and in many cases, monetary value tickets or other media which represents monetary value. These machines may include a media reader, such as a currency (or currency and ticket) accepting device. Such devices are well known, and generally include an acceptor slot into which media such as currency or tickets is inserted by a user, one or more reading devices for reading information from the presented currency/ticket, and a transport and storage elements for routing accepted currency or tickets through the device from the acceptor slot for storage (and later retrieval by the machine operator). The currency acceptor slot is accessible at the exterior of the gaming machine and the reading and storage portions of the device are generally located securely within an interior portion of the gaming machine.
In particular, the acceptor slot of such a currency accepting device is preferably located so that it is ready visible and accessible to a player of the gaming machine. Locating the currency accepting device so that the acceptor slot is in a player-convenient location may mean, however, that the remainder of the currency accepting device (such as the reader and storage elements) are located within the gaming machine at a location where the device is difficult to access. This is problematic because once the storage element of the currency accepting device (such as a removable currency container thereof) is full, it must be accessed (such as to remove a full currency container and replace it with an empty one). Further, at various times, the reading, storage or other elements of the currency accepting device must be accessed for maintenance or the like.
As one example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,676,231 discloses a gaming machine having a rotating bill acceptor (40). This patent describes a gaming machine having a slanted or angled top (156). Due to the angled top of the gaming machine, a bill validator portion (42) of the bill acceptor (40) is readily accessible via an access door (172). However, the cash box (48) of the bill acceptor (40) is not readily accessible. As such, the entire bill acceptor (40) is configured to rotate from a normal use position in which the cash box (48) faces outwardly and is relative inaccessible (as illustrated in FIG. 2A) to an access position as illustrated in FIG. 2B where the cash box (48) faces upwardly and can be lifted out of the gaming machine.
However, the physical configurations of gaming machines are ever-changing and an improved currency accepting device mounting and access configuration is desired which addresses issues with newer gaming machine designs.